Ever heard of "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"well,how many Bodhisattva can dance on the head of a pin?

A person once asked me why I would want to stop rebirth. "It sounds pretty cool. Being able to come back. Who wouldn't want to be reborn."I replied. "Wanting to be reborn is like wanting to stay in a jail cell, when you have the chance to go free and experience the whole wide world. Does a convict, on being freed from his shabby, constricting, little cell, suddenly say "I really want to go back to jail and be put in a cell. It sounds pretty cool. Being able to come back. Who wouldn't want that?"

A funny thing happened. I went to Dharamsala and after some waiting, got a brief audience with the Dalai Lama. I bowed deeply, produced a pin and asked him to dance on it. It seems my Tibetan is rather worse than I thought, and expert speakers of the language have since told me that what I actually said was something closer to suggesting an act that, while not actually anatomically impossible, would nonetheless have been exceedingly uncomfortable were anyone to actually attempt it. I remember the door bursting open and the security guys charging in.

When I regained consciousness, I was in a cell in McLeod Ganj jail and bandaged from head to foot. There is nothing here a Westerner would call food and they keep putting yak butter in my tea. They think it's funny, I suppose. I've had some time to think about karma these last few months and I have concluded that the karma that follows from asking questions like "How many bodhisattvas can dance on the head of a pin" is very bad indeed.